As we approach the 2004 season and all the new conference alignments, every website covering college football has debated which conference is the best in college football. I would like to add my point of view for this website since the buzz about best conference is mainly due to the off season acquisitions of Miami and Virginia Tech
by the ACC. Some hail the new ACC as the absolute best conference, but most fans and analysts out there appear to think it is a close race between the SEC and the ACC, with 3 of the other major conferences close behind. My method may not be orthodox since most discussions only refer to how the teams perform in the national field each year, but I am going to analyze every major aspect of the college football experience to find the best overall college football conference in America.

Does the entrance of QB Bryan Randall and Virginia Tech (and Miami) make the ACC the best conference?courtesy hokiesports.com

First let me outline the parameters for this analysis. Obviously the biggest component
should be the quality of teams top-to-bottom. Other items to consider are the quality
of coaches in the conference, tradition of the football conference, and bowl season
performances. Each conference will be ranked in each of these categories and these
four lists will be compiled to make a final list of the best conferences in America.
I promise the math will be simple to follow as any discussion about ranking conferences
is relatively subjective.

The first step in my analysis was to eliminate conferences that do not stack up
obviously in this debate. These are the eliminated candidates before starting:
1. Sun Belt – Worst conference quality in 1-A. Not a BCS threat.
2. WAC – Other than Boise State and Fresno State, this conference has been beat
up by the major conferences every year. Not a BCS conference.
3. C-USA – The future realignment does not favor this conference, but one last year
of Louisville and Cincinnati could make this conference good. They are still not
good enough based on BCS potential.
4. Big East – Although this is a BCS conference, it is far and away the weakest
by all accounts. Until WVU and UCONN step up to national powerhouses, this conference
does not belong in this discussion.
5. Mountain West – This conference has the most promise of the non-BCS affiliates,
but no reputation as a national power hurt them.
6. MAC – Despite the quality of coaches and players who have come through this league,
they still have some awful teams such as Buffalo, Eastern Michigan, and Ohio (Go
Bobcats!) knocking them out of the discussion.

OK, now that the lesser contenders have been removed and the field cut to five, the
first component I will consider is bowl season performances. The bowl records over
the past five years have been used, and the BCS records have been included with
the overall records.

The SEC gets the best rating here due to overall success in bowl games and being
the second best at BCS bowls currently. The impressive fact about the SEC is that
they achieve this success with an average of 8 teams making the bowl games each year,
so some of them are not great teams. The Pac-10 has a surprising BCS record, but
the weakness of the rest of the conference holds them back. The Big 12 has given
mediocre results in the post-season despite the power teams in that conference,
so they fall behind early.

This was a close call and needed a few recounts to make sure the Big 10 did not
win the popular vote. The SEC and Big 10 are far and away the best conferences if
you are looking for great traditions across the board, but schools like Clemson
and Texas A&M can carry their respective conferences as well. Every major conference
has tons of tradition and I cannot go much further in depth than I did to explain
my selections. Tradition is what makes this game great, so it had to be included
in this analysis.

Although I only listed some of the best coaches in each conference, the Big 10 was
picked for coaching talent top-to-bottom in the league. The ACC just edges out the
SEC for this year, but Saban and Richt are two of the best coaches in the country
this year. The SEC was hurt by worse coaches in the lower ranks as well when compared
to the ACC’s bottom end. The Big 12 is also close to these two thanks to the continued
success of those coaches listed above. If Bill Callahan turns around Nebraska like
Pete Carroll did USC, then look for the Big 12 to contend for a higher spot on this
list. The Pac 10 coaches are quality overall, but the conference lacks the same
talent as the other major conferences.

This is what most of the best conference discussions are mainly based upon, so I
took a little closer look at each conference by comparing the upper, middle, and
lower tiers of each conference against each other. The best upper tier is the SEC
this year followed by the ACC and the Big 12 in that order. For middle tier teams,
the ACC appears to have the most dangerous teams while the SEC came in second and
the Big Ten third in this tier. The worst teams in the conference led to the Big
10 having the best of the worst followed by the Pac-10 and the ACC. Putting this
all together, the rankings above placed the ACC first over the SEC. This makes sense
as the ACC gained two of the elite teams in the Big East this year while the SEC
stayed strong. The Big Ten has the best depth top-to-bottom, and the Big 12 has
some incredible upper tier teams. I hate to keep picking on the Pac-10 because they
were elite enough to make this discussion, but this year it looks like USC and a
bunch of mediocre teams.

To mathematically put these factors together for a total ranking, I took the rank
of each conference in each category and added them up (counting the 2004 Team Quality
twice) to come up with a final point total. The results are then as follows:

Every argument can be taken a different way, and my views probably do not line up
with your own. I do think when all these factors are taken into consideration, the
debate for best conference provides a reasonable result. For all my ACC readers,
I am pleased to report that I think the conference is currently just as strong as
the traditional power conference, the SEC. It will take a few years after the dust
settles on conference realignment to really see where the new ACC ranks with these
other leagues. At least for 2004, the competition seems very close among the elite
BCS conferences, and this should add to the excitement for football fans.

At the end of each article from now until the end of the season, I will be predicting
the outcome of each game for the upcoming week in the ACC and providing a recap
of the last week’s results. I will also name a game of the upcoming week and best
player for the last week’s games. I have to lump the first two weeks together since
Virginia Tech is an ACC team playing in August before everyone else.

Next week I plan to preview the Florida State vs. Miami showdown in depth or something
else entirely. Thanks for reading and talk about this article over on the College
Corner message boards. See you next week!